Michel Bergeron sends a big message to St-Louis and not everyone is happy about it

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Jeff Drouin
October 8, 2022 (5:35 PM)

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Despite the fresh wind that Martin St-Louis has brought behind the bench of the Canadiens since his arrival last February, the results have not always been spectacular, despite a certain turnaround at the end of the season last year.

And since the start of the exhibition games, the Habs have yet to enjoy a win. Despite this, St-Louis remains positive and as Médérick Lefebvre of Danslescoulisses.com reports, this situation irritates former Quebec Nordiques coach and now TVA Sports analyst Michel Bergeron.

Le Tigre denounced this attitude in his latest column in the Journal de Montréal and said that St-Louis runs his team as if it were a hockey school. A pretty harsh criticism:

"But right now, he's in too good a mood. His team finished last in the entire NHL last season and just lost all its preseason games. Training camp results, who cares, you'll tell me.

What we've seen on the ice in the last three games is not fancy. On Thursday, against the Winnipeg Jets, the Habs had only 10 shots after 40 minutes of play before recovering in the third. After the game, once again, St. Louis defended his players. His explanations were so well articulated that everyone was buying it, without flinching."

While the Habs coach shows a great attitude behind the bench and especially in front of the media, Bergeron is not shy about saying that he would like to see him a little more authoritative with his players and show a little more hustle when the team is going through a tough stretch.

He even said that currently, you can see two faces to St-Louis' personality and that it does not reflect what he really thinks of his team.

"On the other hand, part of me hopes that what we see of St. Louis on camera is not 100 percent reflective of what he thinks of his team right now.

I feel like we're seeing two faces of the Habs coach right now: the one feeding the media with big, well-crafted explanations, and the one behind the bench glaring at his assistants with a little exasperation in his face."

Even if Bergie is not entirely wrong in his comments, it is still good to see a coach of the Habs bring life to the organization because we will say it was very different with his predecessors.

That said, we will see during the regular season if Martin St-louis' attitude will change but for now, Kent Hughes and Jeff Gorton must be very satisfied with his work behind the bench.